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DEMOCRACY AT WORK

June 17, 2013

In Blog

NEW LEFT PROJECT

In appreciation of the belligerent badgerer, some highlights.

In a series of State Department press briefings in December 2010, Lee demands answers about Israel’s imprisonment of nonviolent Palestinian activist Abdallah Abu Rahmah.

 

State Department annual human rights report press conference,11 April 2011. Transcript here; tl;dr version: State Department spokesperson boasts about contrast between Chinese despotism and U.S. commitment to human rights and transparency; Matt Lee mentions Bradley Manning; State Department spokesperson morphs into sinister Chinese despot.

 

November 2011 press conference on the U.S.’s decision to pull funding from UNESCO, after the body accepted a Palestinian bid for membership.

State Department press conference during Israel’s attack on Gaza in November 2012. Spokesperson claims the U.S. is practicing quiet diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Lee is unimpressed: “You say… that quiet diplomacy is the way to deescalate that problem. You’ve been doing your quiet diplomacy for almost a week. How’s that going so far?… Hasn’t it occurred to anybody that being less quiet would get more results. The squeaky wheel gets grease. That kind of thing?… You’re being silent while people are dying, left and right.”

And finally, from a few days ago: Lee and other reporters press the State Department spokesperson on the U.S.’s latest Middle East peace push, wringing from her the most succint summary of Obama administration policy that has yet been produced: “Our focus right now is not on consequences… I don’t have anything new, or any new policy”. Fuller transcript here.